Bellfield Hall, by Anna Dean (REVIEW) — Marriage—or Murder(!)—at a Country Manor
A sprawling estate in the English countryside.
A wealthy family, bound by the secrets they hide from their friends and neighbors.
And an engagement party, with the usual sorts in attendance.
Pompous gentlemen of a certain age. Mothers eager to make the best matches for their daughters. Preening dandies too aware of their own highly-eligible status... and giddy young women swooning after them.
But in the middle of all the merriment, the groom-to-be takes off, breaking his engagement without explanation and leaving behind a tearful.
It could’ve been plucked from a Jane Austen novel, except for one more thing... a pesky little murder (which the very proper Ms. Austen certainly never wrote about).
Newcomer Anna Dean, on the other hand, gleefully tosses the murder of a mysterious young woman into the mix in Bellfield Hall, resulting in a Jane Austen-meets-Miss Marple mashup.
Dido, for her part, is more than happy to help. She loves a good puzzle, and also quite relishes the feeling of being needed.
But Dido’s arrival is overshadowed by one more shock at Bellfield Hall when the body of an unknown woman is found on the grounds, murdered.
Catherine isn’t nearly as concerned with a strange dead woman as she is with her absent fiancé. Dido isn’t entirely convinced the two things are unrelated, however, and makes it her (secret) mission to uncover the truth.
The relentless Dido soon realizes that the secrets in the Montague family run very deep... and that plenty of the other houseguests have shameful things which they would also vastly prefer to keep hidden from her prying eyes.
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Bellfield Hall is a lot of fun. It satisfies the desire for a charming Regency-era story, with its polite society and intimate settings, while at the same time serving up some delicious intrigue and a compelling mystery.
The fact that everything works so well, of course, should be laid at the unstylishly-clad feet of the fascinating (and unusual, for the period) heroine, Miss Dido Kent.
Dido truly is a find—as an unmarried woman (of a certain age, herself) with no fortune to call her own, she is very much bound by the strictures of society and propriety.
Despite those limitations, she nonetheless manages to live mostly on her own terms—using her cleverness, curiosity, and skills of observation more... and her lackluster talents at “ladylike” things such as stitching and the arts rather less--without being looked down upon or shunned by others.
It’s a great representation—and one I rather think Ms. Austen would approve of, as well.
For anyone seeking something both comfortably familiar and a bit different in Regency fiction, Bellfield Hall would be a lovely pick.
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